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Dear Secretary General NCRA-ANREC 325 Dalhousie, Suite 230 Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7G2 Robert A. Morin, Secretary General Canadian Radio-televisions and Telecommunications Commission Ottawa, ON K1A ON2 April 14, 2011 Dear Secretary General, RE: Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2011-188 1.I am writing on behalf of the National Campus and Community Radio Association/ l’Association nationale des radios étudiantes et communautaires (“NCRA/ANREC”) in support of an application by Vancouver Co-operative Radio (“CFRO”) to renew the community radio programming undertaking CFRO-FM, expiring 31 August 2011, and in opposition to the Commission issuing a mandatory order or suspending or refusing to renew CFRO’s license. We request the opportunity to appear at this hearing. 2.The NCRA/ANREC is a not-for-profit national association working to recognize, support, and encourage volunteer-based, non-profit, public-access campus and community-based broadcasters in Canada. We provide advice and advocacy for individual campus and community (“c/c”) stations, and conduct lobbying and policy development initiatives for the sector with a view to advancing the role and increasing the effectiveness of our sector. Our goals are to ensure stability and support for individual stations, and to promote the long-term growth and effectiveness of the sector. The Regulatory Issues 3. The Commission notes in CRTC 2011-188 that CFRO “may have failed to comply with s. 9(2) of the Regulations, relating to the submission of annual returns, for the 2008-2009 and 2009- 2010 broadcast years.” 4. CFRO’s March 8, 2011 response letter to the CRTC explained the circumstances that led to their late-filed 2009-2010 annual return, including three factors: 1 (1) Commission staff sent renewal forms to CFRO using a different email address than the one CFRO previously provided to the CRTC for this purpose. (2) Responsibility to file annual returns rested with the Financial Manager, a new CFRO employee who was soon after discharged for being “unable to complete the functions of her position.” (3) Staff turnover occurred at a critical point prior to the filing deadline. 5 The NCRA/ANREC believes CFRO’s staff structure and policies are sound and functional. We note that their Employee Probation Policy caught a problem (an employee unable to discharge her duties) at an early stage (during her probationary period), and addressed it promptly. It was anomalous that the timing of this incident, and the fact that staff could not fulfill the Financial Manager’s duties until a replacement was hired, led to a short delay in submitting the 2009-2010 forms to the CRTC. 6. As a result of the late-filed annual return, CFRO recognized that improvements to staff structure and function could be made and quickly took appropriate steps including: (1) Creating a shared annual calendar listing all official deadlines, including CRTC and other government requirements, adding review of this calendar as a standard agenda item at all bi-weekly staff meetings, and adding a written verification system for staff to confirm that each deadline is met. (2) Creating a second layer of oversight by adding the calendar to the board of directors’ regular agenda so they can verify that staff complete tasks on time. (3) Developing a more thorough training regime for the Financial Manager position, and implementing it when the new Financial Manager was hired. 7. We are informed that CFRO’s 2008-2009 annual return was also submitted approximately two weeks late by a different Financial Manager who is also no longer employed at CFRO. Other staff were not aware that the forms had been submitted late until two years later when the Commission notified CFRO in a letter dated March 2, 2011. If a system of oversight had been in place, such as CFRO’s new shared calendar and verification system, CFRO and the NCRA/ANREC believe that the annual return forms would not likely have been submitted late. 8. To the best of our knowledge, CFRO has complied with s. 9(2) of the Regulations on previous occasions. We believe that CFRO’s response upon realizing possible non-compliance with s. 9(2) of the Regulations was swift and proactive, and we believe that this demonstrates CFRO's strong desire to comply fully with all regulatory requirements. 9. We request that the Commission consider that fact that CFRO, like many c/c stations, struggles financially, and has had trouble attracting experienced applicants for its part-time staff positions due to low salaries. Further, when assessing possible non-compliance, we propose that in each case the Commission take into account the circumstances in which it occurred. This would include consideration of how egregious the non-compliance was (i.e. how long after the deadline the requirement was met – in this case, only eight weeks), the degree of good faith responsiveness the licencee exhibited when possible non-compliance was brought to their attention (in this case, high), the licencee’s past history in meeting each section, and the new 2 measures implemented by the licencee to rectify non-compliance and ensure that it is not repeated. 10. In CRTC 2011-188 the Commission asks CFRO to “show cause why the Commission should not suspend or refuse to renew” their broadcasting license. We strongly discourage the Commission from suspending or not renewing CFRO's broadcasting license. We believe that these measures are unnecessarily punitive of the station, its hundreds of volunteers, and its listeners. On all occasions when the Commission has found CFRO in non-compliance, they promptly made appropriate changes to technology, training, policies and procedures to ensure future compliance, and they have complied with those sections of the Regulations on all subsequent occasions. We ask the Commission to take these good faith efforts into account, and to consider CFRO’s history of compliance with each section of the Regulations before imposing such harsh consequences. We believe that to suspend, or refuse to renew CFRO's license would be detrimental to the Vancouver community, the c/c radio sector, and the Canadian broadcasting system. 11. In CRTC 2011-188 the Commission also asks whether a mandatory order should be issued requiring CFRO to comply with s. 9(2) of the Regulations. We believe this is not necessary, as CFRO has already demonstrated their commitment to comply through the actions outlined above. Further, we discourage the Commission from issuing mandatory orders to stations in the c/c sector whenever possible. We believe the effect of them would be to increase stations’ stress and fear of more severe repercussions without supporting them to develop better systems to ensure that Regulations are not breached in future. We believe it is in the best interests of the Canadian broadcasting system and incumbent upon the Commission pursuant to s. 3(1)(b) of the Broadcasting Act to ensure that all three radio sectors are healthy and vibrant. C/c stations want and intend to be fully compliant, but some encounter legitimate barriers to doing so. We believe that supporting c/c stations to meet all regulatory requirements through the provision of clear summaries of regulatory requirements, sample documents, how-to guides, and advice would be more constructive in ensuring full compliance than the threat of court proceedings. 12. At CFRO’s last license renewal (CRTC 2008-119), they were granted a short-term renewal based on non-compliance with s. 2.2(8) of the Regulations (Canadian musical selections from content category 2). The Commission's analysis for the week of November 5-11, 2006 showed that CFRO played 32.8% Canadian musical selections in category 2, only 2.2% less than the 35% required under the Regulations. 13. At that time, CFRO explained the non-compliance based on three factors: (a) There was a discrepancy between how the Commission classified some of the musical selections in question and how CFRO classified them. (b) A program focused on category 2 replaced a regularly scheduled program focused on category 3 whose hosts were temporarily unable to attend. (c) Some selections of audio/sound art broadcast that week were not counted toward CFRO’s Canadian Content Requirement because they were not classed as musical selections, despite being original Canadian productions. 14. The NCRA/ANREC is pleased to have the opportunity to comment on Canadian Content requirements and content category composition in CRTC 2011-174, and we hope changes can 3 be made so that categories will accurately reflect the diverse and experimental nature of programming produced by c/c radio stations. We believe CFRO’s points (a) and (c) above suggest that the existing music categories should be re-defined in ways that may prevent similar non-compliance by other stations in the future. 15. We are informed that CFRO took the following steps to ensure that all of their Canadian Content requirements will be met in future: (a) They require that all replacement programming must be of the same genre as the regularly scheduled programming. (b) Staff regularly remind all programmers of Canadian Content requirements for all music selection categories. A poster has also been placed in the on-air booth. (c) Log sheets are regularly reviewed for compliance with Canadian Content and programmers who do not fulfill the requirements are notified and warned. 16. Although we do consider CFRO’s non-compliance with s. 2.2(8) to be a serious matter, we do not believe it indicates a larger pattern of non-compliance. On that occasion, the non- compliance pertained to content category 2, which represented just 10% of CFRO’s music programming. However, almost 50% of CFRO’s category 3 music programming (which made up 90% of their music programming) qualified as Canadian Content.
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